Round the world cyclist week 4: SE Turkey

2800 miles completed, follow his progress life, and watch him on video two

As I write Globe cyclists, James Bowthorpe just notched up his 2800th mile on the 29th day of his journey with 140 to go if he is to achieve the record in the schedule he has set himself.

James is now into the Asian leg of his journey riding through south eastern Turkey hoping to reach the city of Erzurum by tonight (Sunday) from there he will be heading on to Iran and points east although the curret political instability in Pakistan means that James has had to alter his route to avoid that country and add more miles in to the US leg of his ride.

Last week's break in Istanbul gave him the chance to blog about the first three weeks of the trip – the longest continuous leg of the whole journey. Useful tips for any long distance cyclists tempted to follow in James' tyre tracks included how to get language lessons from border guards and the best ways of finding cheap hotels late at night. He also gives his thoughts on the performance of the kit he is using.

James also informs us that for the the first three week leg through Europe he didn't use padded shorts – they are on now though.

Since leaving Istanbul James has tackled mountains “Hmm. Today I will mostly be going uphill. Local just made mountain sign, pointed at bike and said Big Problem”, bought a hat, donned trousers because he felt shorts were becoming socially unacceptable, and more than once experienced the kindness of strangers, and had issues with his cycle computer, though aside from a temporary buzzing sound cured by some bees wax none with his Santo bike's belt drive. Oh, and he also started following road.cc on Twitter.

James is also making videos as he goes and posting them to youtube – he's just uploaded 23 short vids which chart his progress so far here's one from the Bulgarian mountain leg of his trip.

James is making his round the world record attempt to raise money for research into Parkinson's Disease so far he has raised £33, 306.00 his target is £1.8m so head on over to his website and help him reach it.

Plucked from the obscurity of his London commute back in the mid-Nineties to live in Bath and edit bike mags our man made the jump to the interweb back in 2006 as launch editor of a large cycling website somewhat confusingly named after a piece of navigational equipment. He came up with the idea for road.cc mainly to avoid being told what to do… Oh dear, issues there then. Tony tries to ride his bike every day and if he doesn't he gets grumpy, he likes carbon, but owns steel, and wants titanium. When not on his bike or eating cake Tony spends his time looking for new ways to annoy the road.cc team. He's remarkably good at it.